In which I’m startled by a request

I was sitting at my desk the other day, lost in some piece of work or other, when one of my colleagues got up to leave the office and suddenly asked me to forgive her.  I must have looked a little startled because she stopped to explain that she’s off on a trip to see family Pakistan and it’s traditional to ask people forgiveness before going away.  Of course, I said I forgave her for anything she might have done to upset me.

After she left, I stopped to consider if I did have anything to forgive her for and realised that I was in fact still angry with her for coming into work with a very nasty dose of flu last year and giving it to me.  I was angry because this meant that I couldn’t visit my dying father for two weeks because he was so weakened by chemotherapy that we couldn’t risk him catching it off me.   My colleague couldn’t have known this, but still there was a sense of resentment.

Although it might seem a little strange to me, as a secular westerner, to be asked for forgiveness like this, I found it quite helpful in drawing my attention to this little grudge against her that I’ve been carrying around and in giving me an opportunity to let it go.  It’s also refreshing to have such a direct acknowledgement of the possibility of death, something which is just such an enormous taboo in western culture.   I hope my colleague comes back from Pakistan safely, but of course, she might not.  You never know when death might be coming for you and there’s something very life-affirming about facing this squarely.

Mindfulness – what it is and what it isn’t

Via @Nella’s Lou’s twitter feed, a great post from Aloha Dharma, The Myth of Mindfulness:

Mindfulness is the gentle, recurring, building of a relationship between the mind of the meditator and an object of meditation. To build this relationship the meditator constantly guides the mind back to the object and surrenders as much attention to the object as they can. In this process, the mind becomes quiet and still, and the object starts to become more and more joyful to watch. Once the meditator begins to master mindfulness, they will find that they are wondering “…is this it? There must be more than this.” And the answer is that there is much, much more. When mindfulness increases, so do the other factors of meditation, particularly concentration, energy and investigation. At this point, two things can happen, the meditator can increase attention so much that they experience “absorption” with the object, in which the object seems to absorb the whole of experience, or the meditator can begin investigating the object to see if the teachings of the Dharma are true (check out the General Dharma page for more). What the meditator will inevitably discover though, is that mindfulness is not all that there is to meditation and awakening. Mindfulness is the foundation upon which more complex and subtle meditative techniques rest. It is the first skill a meditator learns, the one that is done throughout all of one’s practice as a supporting background, and the one that continues to need refreshing even after enlightenment.